So Storm FM have an upcoming comedy night, and I was tasked with making a poster to advertise the event…

The idea we came up with was a Brick Wall backdrop, laminate stage flooring red curtains, mic stand and spotlight with the shaddow

Which was all well and good, except it had to be HiRes enough to use on an A3 poster, and that limits your options slightly, there wasn’t much available without paying for an image from a Stock website. So I made it myself…

Heres my ’3D’ stage set, made from scratch in photoshop.

And how it was made,

I sampled some Bricks, Wooden Flooring, Curtains, Mic Stand, and Mic Separately, modified the sizes accordingly then tried to add perspective, spotlight & shaddow

Let me know what you think

Theres not a great deal i can say about this, bar watch in utter astonishment.

Phantom of the Floppera

As you may have guessed from my previous posts, I’m a bit of a first-person shooter junkie when it comes to games.  You can therefore imagine my state of mind having seen the two videos below of a new shooter due for release next month – Crysis 2.  In-game footage looks pretty spectacular and the following content reaches around a 10 on Big Bear’s Badassery Meter.

Crysis 2 hits Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on March 25th.

So a friend of mine recently went cold turkey, gave up Facebook for an entire week.  Not for any particular reason or addiction, or to force themselves to do work, just because he felt like it.  Having spoken to him this morning he mentioned that he didn’t really struggle with it, until the weekend, when it was used to organise plans.  Said he had found himself going to a computer and when they opened their internet browser, found that he started instinctively typing www.fa… before thinking about it.

Some websites to help if you find yourself in a similar situation…

Twitter
Stumbleuopn

Are we growing increasingly reliant on Facebook?

An artist i quite admire, Mr Scruff.

Its in my head as he’s playing Bangor this evening, and this is one of my favourite songs, along with ‘Get A Move On’ you should look it up if you get a moment, but to keep it brief he’s a DJ that creates many of the tracks he plays himself sampling various vocalists, and the range of genre’s of music he plays is unreal.

Despite being the unluckiest Ireland supporter in the world by having to work during the match on Sunday, after painfully watching the recording I no longer have any nervous system, or fingernails.

The nails were in Ireland’s coffin from the beginning when Dave Pearson was named referee; I am not one to criticise referees, but there was definite tension between Pearson and the Ireland squad; more than likely because of his biased refereeing style in the past. This is a bone of contention with me as I believe Six Nations matches should be overseen by Southern hemisphere referees to ensure total impartiality.

Ireland had a fantastic opening, displaying the kind of agression and attacking that many commentators such as George Hook had stated the squad didnt have. But it was forced errors and a serious lack of discipline that cost Ireland dearly, not to mention Sean Cronin’s monumental mistake dropping the ball with the try line within a stones throw distance. Despite outscoring France by three tries to one, and playing out of their skins; it was sly tactics and underhanded plays that secured France a win. So it comes down to relying on the outcomes of other games to determine whether Ireland will succeed in this tournament; England need to beat France, and Ireland must defeat England during their next game at the Aviva Stadium. Ireland’s biggest threat in this game comes in the form of the duo of Lewis Moody and Chris Ashton. However the English pairing will face difficult competition in the form of Stpehen Ferris and Tommy Bowe, who has stepped up his recovery from a knee injury in order to be fit for Ireland’s clash at Murrayfield.

And so it comes down to the grit of the players, Ireland must now dig deep and drum up the agression and perfect the discipline that saw them lift the Grand Slam three years ago. Irish supporters cannot wait another 66 years to relive the glory of that day. Every Irish supporter remembers where they were the day O’Gara kicked that perfect drop goal between those posts at the Millenium stadium, and one can only hope we dont have to wait six decades for that glory to come to us again.

Okay, so I’m slightly skeptical about this device, the website is fairly barebones, and it just looks like many concept pieces you can find on the internet which don’t actually exist.  However the NoteSlate claims to have a release date set for June 2011 for the Basic models, Black or White e-ink, and December 2011 for Red, Green & Blue e-ink, what i’m really excited about though is one that is set for the following year with a multicolour function.

It seems to be the ideal geeks toy, picture taking something to lecture that you can’t browse facebook on but you still enjoy using because its a hot piece of tech, I for one think a device such as this would massively boost productivity, in place of a laptop with internet browsing capabilities, it has set firmware, you can’t use it for gaming either (Although i envisage the first hack released for it will probably attempt to turn it into an affordable 13 inch Graphics tab)

Above is the multicolour version estimated for some point in 2012.

The price tag associated at the moment stands at $99 USD or ~£67 GBP which i see as being fairly reasonable for this kind of device, its battery life is 150-180 hours on a full charge, and WiFi is an optional extra (apparently for no extra cost).

Content is retrieved from the device via USB, over WiFi or SD Card Reader, and it can store up to 32 GB of ‘notes’ on the aforementioned SD Card (which by the way is quite a lot of notes).

Devices like this always have their flaws, and quite honestly i can see the price being hiked up on release.

The website can be found here http://www.noteslate.com

Okay, so a band you may remember The Strokes are attempting a comeback after a hiatus, and as a ploy to attract attention they decided to give their new single away free online for 24 hours, the link is now taken down, but as you can imagine the song is still floating around the void that is the internet.

All I’m gonna say is, if the rest of the album offers gem’s like this, it’s gonna be one hell of a comeback

World Invasion: Battle LA is a new sci-fi invasion film hitting cinemas worldwide next month.  It stars Michelle Rodriguez and Aaron Eckhart, and I find myself strangely optimistic as to whether it will be any good.

As the first round of Six Nations matches finishes I think we can safely say its been one of the worst opening weekends Ive seen for a long time. And Ireland were no exception.

It was very nearly a disaster, if only for a hastily fumbled drop goal from Ronan O’Gara it would have been an embarrassing defeat brough about by stupid errors and a serious lack of discipline. Brian O’Driscoll stated the Ireland’s performance was substandard. Personally I think he was just being polite; it was downright awful. Admittedly Ireland have struggled with injuries and were missing a number of key players but it is no excuse when playing Test matches, especially with the World Cup looming ever closer.

Jonathan Sexton was named ahead of O’Gara which was expected; but like so many young players his nerves seemed to get the better of him.  I have just finished reading O’Gara’s autobiography and from what he has described of his early career in rugby; nerves are something he will learn to control in time.  Kidney has found a fitting replacement in Sexton for O’Gara when he eventually announces his retirement.

One thing that will have boosted morale in the Ireland camp is the news that Leinster have agreed new contracts with Brian O’Driscoll, Jamie Heaslip and Jonathan Sexton are now secure at RDS until summer 2013.  And so we look ahead to this weekend when Ireland will face France at the new Aviva stadium.  The new stadium and home crowd are sure to add some momentum to the squad facing their bitterest rivals.  Even though it has been some years and Ireland now have a grandslam under their belts, I dont think the sting of France snatching the title from their grasp in 2007.  So get behind your teams this weekend and if you dont have a preference, get behind Ireland!